by John Green
Published on January 10th 2012
Dutton Books, 318 pages
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Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.
Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.
Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.
- Goodreads.com description
I've been thinking about this book a lot since the moment I finished reading it. It wasn't one of the usual stories I read. But it had changed me for forever. I owe this amazing book a proper review.
Hazel. She is such a sweet girl. In the beginning of the book, her mother send her to this Support Group, because she thinks Hazel has depression. She does not. She just like being home and read books. She knows she is sick and she doesn't want to go out much and make friends and stuff. But nonetheless, she goes to the Support Group to make her mum happy.
There she meets Augustus Waters. Augustus is amazing, funny, gorgeous, intelligent, and he likes her a lot. They become friends. And Hazel intruduce him the passion for a book - An Imperial Affliction - which is a book, with no ending. Or better say, it finish in the middle of a sentence. Hazel's biggest wish is to hear the end of this book before she dies.
Here starts their adventure to discover the end of An Imperial Affliction and also the beginning of an amazing friendship and love.
John Green made an amazing job with this book, because it brings up so many emotions, you'll be in awe, trust me. Hazel is such a nice character with whom you'll find very easily to connect to. Apart from the cancer, she is a normal, sweet teenage girl. And you'll see that she has a very interesting point of view about the world, a different one. This is also one of the reasons why Augustus likes her so much.
In this place, I want to leave a quote from the amazing book. It's one of the favourite quotes I've EVER read and I feel the need to share it with you. I cried the first time I've read it. I rarely cry while reading, but this one caught me hard. It's a spoiler, so if you haven't read the book, I suggest you not to read it. But still, I feel the NEED to share it.
I took a few breaths and went back to the page. “I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
